Top 10 Noble Map Pack Kills: Ep 15

Hey everyone, it's Anoj and to make the new Noble Map Pack maps feel like they are part of the Halo Reach family, the Top 10 Series has made a countdown exclusively of clips from Breakpoint, Tempest, and Anchor 9. Sit back and enjoy the show!

Tons of Stuff™ is Live

Spawn on your Bro Coop Style? Yup.

In case you've been living under a rock (which I would imagine is a terrible place to call home and irrelevant to this discussion as you likely do not have access to the Internet), you already know that our matchmaking team gave birth to the mother of playlist updates earlier today. It's such a big bundle of joy that I'm going to point you to existing summaries instead of attempting to describe its epic proportions. Or you could just, you know, jump into matchmaking and discover the miracle for yourself.

Annihilation Circuit: Reach Custom Map

If you're looking to add a little more danger to your life, download this map, hop on a Mongoose, and hang on tight.

"Stewie2552 and the Funny Halo 3 Productions staff present a new custom map for the Reach community, 'Annihilation Circuit.' It's difficult to explain in words, so watch the map promo video below! Then download the map and the two game variants built for the map!"

Bungie All Stars - Week 5

Wort, wort, you know the rest.

If you're sitting at home with an oiled roll of newspaper and a pair of tongs in hand, then you desperately need to stop taking me so literally. This week, you won't have to do anything out of the ordinary to earn a shot at taking top honors and earning a star nameplate. Unless you don't ordinarily take screenshots of kick ass subject matter in Halo: Reach.

Here are this week's rules:

Using the Halo: Reach Theater, take your best screenshot of an Elite (yes, multiple Elites are cool, too).

You have from this very second until Thursday, February 10th at 11:59pm PT to submit your entry for consideration to contest@bungie.com.

Use the subject line “Bungie All Star Week 5" (without the quotation marks).

The size limit is 10MB and you should use your best judgment and discretion in terms of the nature of the content you choose to submit. (No cloaca!).

One submission per person. Please include the screenshot itself, along with a link to your Bungie.net profile, the screenshot on Bungie.net, and your Xbox LIVE gamertag in your email.

Once again, just about anything goes. Any mode and any tone. Campaign or Firefight, funny or just plain fudging awesome - it doesn't matter. Make us bust a gut, break down and cry, or blow a hole in the back of our pants for the best shot at victory.

Forge Lesson 44: Aesthetic Noise

Look at that folks. We are back on schedule. Hope everyone enjoyed the super bowl. Today marks just a little over 6 months since I started this series back in August last year. I hope all of you are enjoying it. I am learning as much as all of you are and with this series I have discovered new details and tricks in level design. Thanks for all of your guys' feedback and support thus far. It is what keeps this series alive and well.

Back on topic. Today's lesson talks about a very common issue that is seen in very "pretty" maps. Sometimes so much detailing and attention is put towards a piece of aesthetic with the designer not realizing how much it can distract from actual gameplay. Like other concepts aesthetic noise is not a major issue, but learning it and learning to manage it can push your step a little bit closer to perfection.

* Aesthetic noise can also be referred to as busy aesthetics, where too much is going on in one place
* Detailing is a great thing for maps, but if not done smoothly enough it can be more of a distraction than a feature
* Busy aesthetics can cause players to miss important incentives around the map and draw attention to unimportant areas

MLG Featured Map Trio

Since early after Halo Reach launched, MLG's content team has closely watched the Forge forum's production, and periodically hand picks a map to showcase to the world what MLG's Forge community is capable of. In the latest edition, co-forgers DeathstarsOG and Unoverrated receive recognition for their impressive co-Forging efforts, producing three feature worth maps at an incredible pace. Quantity does not always come at the expense of quality when two great minds work so well together.

Halo: Reach Mythic Difficulty Guide: The Package

It's Friday Monday, so it's time for another episode of 'Beat the Covenant Senseless' - Tyrant will show you how The Package can be conquered with All Skulls On. Written commentary for folks who like following recipes, spoken commentary over actual gameplay for visual learners. He's got you all covered!

tranQ & Friends 2 - A Halo: Reach/Halo 3 Community Montage

"This is the 2nd installment of tranQ's 'tranQ and Friends' series, a Halo community montage series featuring clips from himself and, well, his friends. Similar to the first installment, the gameplay features a mix of everything, the soundtrack is laid back, and the editing is simple yet effective. I found the gameplay to be very clean overall with very few missed shots, and I was quite impressed by many of the snipes. Enjoy!

If you want to submit a clip to the next installment, send tranQ a YouTube personal message with the Bungie file share link. Here's a link to his channel: http://www.youtube.com/imtranQ. You can also recommend him the clip over Xbox Live to his gamertag tranQQQ. Also, feel free to send him Halo 2, Halo 2 Vista, and Halo: CE clips as well."

Map Spotlight Week 13 - Reactor 9

It's February, and as the months go on more maps are being made. This week I will be presenting to you another one of my personal favorites, Reactor 9 by Swayz (The Swayzinator). The only thing I got out of this map is how utterly amazing it was, but Mr. Swayz did a much better job at explaining it's awesomeness. Enjoy! ;)

Q. Who are you and why do you Forge?

A. I go by Swayz, Brannagin, Law, or any variation of my username and my gamertag. I forge because I enjoy creating new maps. It sparks my creativity and I find it spices up Halo to play on new and different types of maps/gametypes. Plus, it's quite fun to just mess around in forge when you have no one to play with :)

Q. What was your inspiration for Reactor 9?

A. It was the round stairwell pieces. I was playing on someones map who had utilized them in the corner of their map as a sort of aesthetic feature. I thought that they would make a cool playable area so I started messing around in forge and I came up with the defenders base for Reactor 9. From there, I just kept building.

Q. What made you choose the location you did?

A. I chose the location because once I figured out how I wanted the defenders base to look, it was a no brainer to make it into a dam structure. It had natural walls to keep everyone in the playable area and I'm not familiar with many maps that have utilized this play area yet.I don't think I could not have built this anywhere else and gotten the same results.

Q. Did you employ any unusual Forge techniques in making Reactor 9?

A. Not really. Forge in Reach is a lot easier to use than it was in Halo 3 and there aren't a lot of unusual forge techniques that need to be used to make a map anymore. Anything you want to do with an object is pretty straight forward. Whether it's merging or getting a very specific angle. This map was pretty straight forward, although I think I used the round stairwells rather creatively :)

Q. Anything else people should know before they download?

A. This map is only set up for CTF, Assault, and Team Slayer gametypes. If you play Team Slayer, the blue team has a clear advantage on the weapons. You've been warned. If you want the most out of this map, play 1-Bomb or 1-Flag. I feel like 1-flag and 1-bomb are very neglected and underrated gametypes, so I built this map with those two gametypes in mind.

I'd also like to give a shout out to The Workplace and The T00L B0X for testing this map and giving me a lot of valuable feedback. Thanks guys (and gals)!! I hope everyone enjoys it!

Thank you for your time, Swayz! Note the community: Please feel free to download the map file below, and enjoy!

2011 MLG Pro Circuit

Halo: Reach and half a million dollars.

Today, Major League Gaming released the first details of their upcoming 2011 MLG Pro Circuit, featuring Halo: Reach as one of the three titles. This Season, MLG will be hosting six massive, 208-team Halo: Reach 4v4 live competitions at six events across the country for over $500,000 in prize money. It all kicks off at the 2011 opener in Dallas, TX on the weekend of April 1-3.

Antagonize's 1st Halo: Reach Montage

This is Antagonize's 1st Halo: Reach montage, edited by OurFallenHero. The gameplay is really good, featuring a lot of very nice overkills along with a killtacular on Zealot. I really liked the relaxed song choice, and the editing goes along with it quite well. Enjoy!

Bungie All Star Website Project

If you want to unofficially show off your hard work, read the message below. Don't worry, it won't impact the judging process in any way. Promise.

"I'm not going to lie, it was not easy throwing the hundreds of images together into one giant collage, but I have a better idea, (much easier for me too). I will be designing a website showing everyone's artwork! The website will be up and running as soon as I finish it, (later today).

1500 x 3500

This week's Bungie All Star Challenge has led to a little bit of confusion. What is a megapixel anyway? Existential questions aside, here's a quick breakdown to help you get on track.

The dimensions can be either 1500x3500 or 3500x1500. It depends on whether your card is formatted horizontally, or vertically. See, you're ultimately going to fold it, so technically the front panel is really half the width of the layout (1750 or 750, respectively). If your design spans the entire width and doesn't account for the fold, it's going to make for an odd birthday card.

Example (Not to Scale):

<-------this is the back of the card----------3500---------this is the front of the card------------->

Fold down the center. If you want to design the interior, you'll need to create a separate image using the same parameters for the left and right interior panels. If you're still confused, hit up the local drugstore and emulate the layout of a real birthday card.